Heartbreak and White Silk
by LittleFairyAV
Summary: Season 2 AU: Pam brings her wedding dress in to the office for Phyllis to hem. Jim just has to look.


FYI: I don't own the office.

Alternate Universe: Casino Night never happened. Jim is still at Scranton, although he's planning to leave soon. The wedding is June 10th, so let's call this the last week of May. Phyllis is tailoring Pam's wedding dress as a present, so Pam had to bring it in to work so she could try it on and Phyllis could figure out how much to hem it.

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It was a bad idea. He was sure of that, at least. But ever since Pam had walked in with the bag slung over her arm and gone into the back room with Phyllis to do the fitting for her wedding dress, Jim had, after experiencing the frustration and despair that he always felt whenever he was reminded of the impending marriage, been more than a little curious. He tried to talk himself out of it; it was self-destructive, masochistic, idiotic, for him to even consider looking at that dress. And yet, he reasoned with himself, he had already fought off the biggest temptation – he was never going to see her wear it; he wouldn't even trust himself to be on the same hemisphere as her on the wedding day. He knew himself too well to attend; as far as he knew, he would end up trying to stop her right before she walked down the aisle, or standing up and making some embarrassing confession in that 'speak now or forever hold your peace' bit of the ceremony, or getting pathetically smashed at the reception, or somehow getting her alone and trying to kiss her less then twenty-four hours after she had promised to be faithful to another man. There was no way he was going to that wedding. The truth was, though, he had spent too much time obsessing over her to not be curious. Late at night, when he lay in bed awake and he was too tired to save himself from the heartbreak, he thought about what she would look like in a white dress. Part of him wondered whether the dress in his head looked anything like the real one. So when he saw the girls leave the break room and realized that the dress was still lying on the table, he couldn't resist walking in and taking a look.

Before he knew what he was doing, he reached forward and touched the fabric of the dress. Like a man entranced, he ran his trembling fingers across the soft fine silken cloth, feeling the place where the skirt would fall gently over the curve of her hips, tracing the pattern of glittering embroidery that ran along the waistband. He brushed his hand lightly over the subtle arch and bend of the bodice, his chest tightening with uncontrollable longing when he felt the warmth that her skin had left in the folds of silk, and his stomach twisted up with the guilty sense that this reaction was a disgusting betrayal of her trust, an illicit invasion of a region which was private to her and forbidden to him. The fantasies came anyway, burning across his skull: she was his, and no one else's, forever; he was caressing her skin instead of empty silk. Nightmares followed daydreams; he saw her walking down the aisle and into Roy's arms, saw Roy's hands raking greedily over her body, and he felt sick with jealousy. He noticed the pair of scissors among the sewing tools on the table and, in a desperate flash of anger, pictured slicing them into the silk, ripping the seams open and tearing the whole thing to shreds, as if with that one act he could stop or even delay the inevitable loss of everything he couldn't bear to lose. Instead, his fingers traveled back down the dress, and he found himself clutching the maddeningly soft fabric in his hands while tears gathered in his eyes, because he just couldn't take it anymore. How much pain was one man expected to endure? The lump in his throat became a shuddering, half-strangled sob.

"Jim?"

He started at her voice, but he didn't turn around. He heard her hesitate and then begin to walk towards him, and he was frustrated with himself because, even now, as his heart broke in two and his eyes swam with tears, the sound of her approaching footsteps still made his pulse accelerate and his palms sweat.

"Jim? What's wrong?"

He wasn't going to turn around. He wasn't going to let himself fall apart in front of her. The concern in her voice was seductive, dangerous. It would trick him into believing that she cared about him. Already he ached to surrender to it, to meet her sympathetic eyes and tell her everything. It had almost happened once before: _Did you want to tell me something? You look like you want to tell me something. You look like you have something really important to say and you just can't for some reason. Come on, you can tell me. Jim, you can tell me anything. _She hadn't meant it then, and she didn't now.

He felt a warm, tentative hand on his shoulder. "Why won't you look at me? What did I do, Jim?" she asked, in the soft, pleading tone he had never found a defense for. Weakness flooded through him and he found himself turning around before he had consciously decided to do so.

There she was, looking much too beautiful and standing much too close for any sanity to be expected from him. Her eyes widened when she saw his tortured, tear-stained face.

"Jim…" she said, her hand moving from his shoulder and stopping at his chest, the gentle pressure making it difficult for him to breathe. He held his arms behind his back and gripped the edge of the table, afraid of the impulse to kiss her that always came to him in moments like this.

"What's wrong?" she repeated.

"Nothing," he said, unable to make the word sound at all convincing.

"I can tell that you're lying, Jim. I know you," she said.

"No. You don't," he replied sadly. She had no idea.

"Yes I do. You're my best friend," she said with a patient smile.

He grit his teeth in frustration and his expression became bitter, sarcastic. "Yeah," he muttered, dropping his gaze to the floor. She sensed his mood, moved away towards the door, her hand dropping away from his chest and back to her side.

"If you wanted me to leave, you could have said so," she said angrily. When he met her eyes, he could see how much he'd hurt her feelings. Guilt filled him again, combined with the undeniable knowledge that, no matter how upset he was with her, he would never actually _want her to leave_. "I don't." he replied.

"Then what do you want from me, Jim?" she asked, frustrated.

This has never been an ideal thing for a woman to say to a man who is desperately in love with her.

He didn't think. He didn't make any decisions.

His legs crossed the room in one long stride and his hands wrapped around the small of her back and pulled her close until his lips found hers.

Her body, at first frozen in shock, soon melted into his embrace, and her hands moved of their own accord onto his chest, across his face, tangling in his hair. They were both drowning in each other's touch, in the delirious heat that enveloped them. She broke away first, breathless and confused, and when he realized what he had done, he wrenched himself from her arms and walked over to a chair on the opposite side of the room, where he sat with his face in his hands.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to do that."

She was quiet for a few seconds.

"Was that your answer, Jim?"

He looked at her, exhaustion apparent in his eyes.

"I asked you what you wanted from me, and you kissed me. Was that your answer?" She repeated.

"Everything," he said quietly.

"What?"

"That's my answer. Everything. OK Pam?" he said, his voice thick with emotion. He couldn't hide it anymore - his vulnerability, his brokeness, all laid out for her to see.

"Oh, Jim…" Pam said, crossing over to where he sat and reaching down to stroke his face, her touch scattering his thoughts.

"Pam?" Roy's voice came through the door from across the office, shattering their reprieve from the world. Pam's hand froze on his cheek.

Jim almost doubled up in pain. She was engaged. She was getting married in less than a month. What the hell was he thinking? Why was he still here?

"I should go," Jim said, standing up.

"Jim, I…" she began, trying to find the right words to say.

"You… are going to look beautiful in that dress," Jim said, with a sad, bitter smile on his face. He walked out of the room and forced himself to not look back.

He was already in the parking lot when he heard her footsteps behind him and her voice calling out.

"Wait, Jim!"

What was she doing? Why couldn't she just let him go without twisting the knife in one more time? He didn't like the way his heart lifted with hope at her words – it wasn't healthy. The more hope he felt now, the more painful it would be later, when it became clear that what sounded and felt like her love was really just her pity. He still turned around, though. He couldn't resist her even when she was tearing him apart. He knew, too, that this might be the last time he saw her. A few more seconds, one last disappointment: how much extra damage could that do, when he was already half-destroyed?

"What, Pam?" he said, his voice harsh and his eyes flashing with unconcealed anger.

She just looked at him, tears hanging in her eyes. He took an unthinking step towards her, overcome with the stupid urge to wipe her tears away, to hug her tightly and apologize for hurting her like this. He stopped himself, though. It wasn't his job to comfort her anymore.

He closed his eyes in frustration.

"What, Pam? What do you want from me?"

This has never been an ideal thing for a man to say to a woman who is desperately in love with him.

She ran across the parking lot, her hair coming loose and her barrette clattering onto the asphalt, and before he knew what was happening, she had pressed her lips to his, wrapping her hands around his neck and pulling him close. It was the late afternoon, cool shadows falling all around them and the breeze picking up, and she had forgotten her jacket in her rush to follow him – but she was anything but cold.

She only pulled her lips away once, to whisper in his ear, "Everything."

And, surprisingly, he found that he believed her.

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What did you think? Give me a review and you can tell me! :-)

Ok, one more thing. My dad's cousin lives in LA and directs infomercials for Proactiv, and he gets to meet a lot of celebrities, and when I found out that Jenna Fisher was going to be a spokeswoman for them, I freaked out and emailed him. And he told me that he hasn't directed one of her commercials yet, but that he talked to her on the phone a few times and she was very nice, and that he will probably be directing her eventually, and that I should come visit him when he does so I can meet her. So... if you were going to get to meet Jenna Fisher, what would you ask her? Like, 'What were Pam and Pam's mom talking about on the phone at the end of Casino Night?' or 'What did Jim and Pam do on their first date?' not 'What's John Krasinski's cell phone number?' lol. I'll let you know what happens.


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